{"id":61575,"date":"2018-11-02T10:57:23","date_gmt":"2018-11-02T16:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/animal-rescue-deals-with-suspected-poisonings\/"},"modified":"2018-11-02T16:57:23","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T16:57:23","slug":"animal-rescue-deals-with-suspected-poisonings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/animal-rescue-deals-with-suspected-poisonings\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal rescue deals with suspected poisonings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Karen
Karen Corcoran-Watkins suspects all six of her pygmy goats were killed by someone who spread poison to kill prairie dogs on her land at the Dove Hill Haven south of Mancos. These three goats, Unique, Midnight and Lucky, were killed in the suspected poisonings.<\/span>Courtesy of Dove Hill Haven<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Karen Corcoran-Watkins has a mystery to solve that hits too close to home.<\/p>\n

On Thursday morning, she woke to find three of her beloved pygmy goats dead. That came after two of her goats died Wednesday and another earlier this week.<\/p>\n

She suspects someone spread an undetermined poison on her property to kill prairie dogs and in the process managed to kill all of her goats \u2013 Snow, Unique, Midnight, Pattie, Jolie and Lucky.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sure they were poisoned,\u201d she said. \u201cLet me put it to you this way: Our prairie dog population has declined tremendously this week. I used to be able to see a lot of them running around. Now, I can\u2019t count 10 of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone took it upon themselves to eliminate the prairie dogs on our property without thinking that a goat will eat anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Corcoran-Watkins, along with her husband, Bob Watkins; her son, Barry Cohen; and her 92-year-old mother, LuDeen Corcoran; run Dove Hill Haven<\/a>, a rescue for abused animals, on their property south of Mancos near Cedar Grove Cemetery.<\/p>\n

The family of animal lovers opened their haven for rescue animals about a year ago, and now the suspected poisonings have forced them to close off access to their 5-acre pasture to the 23 dogs they have at the haven, many of whom were red-tagged for euthanasia in Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe used to let them out to run around. Now, I\u2019m terrified to do that,\u201d Corcoran-Watkins said.<\/p>\n

The dogs \u2013 some cancer survivors, some deaf, some blind, some used as bait dogs to train pit bulls \u2013 are now confined to a 4,300-square-foot fenced yard.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a mission of love. We love animals, and you can\u2019t call us a shelter because the animals never leave,\u201d Corcoran-Watkins said. \u201cWe have enough acreage where we can do this, and when my husband retired, he said, \u2018Let\u2019s do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides the dogs, Dove Hill Haven<\/a> has 18 feral cats, which have been spayed and neutered, and one llama. The goats were pets, raised by the family and not part of the menagerie of rescued animals.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all get along. The dogs don\u2019t bother the cats. They take care of each other,\u201d Corcoran-Watkins said.<\/p>\n

She said the prairie dogs moved into their pasture over the past two years because they have been unable to flood irrigate because of the drought, but she said the rodents would have left their 5-acre pasture once they started irrigating again.<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t believe any of her neighbors are responsible for the suspected poisonings because none of them objected to the opening of Dove Hill Haven. Also, she said the closest family has three children, who are frequent play companions with the dogs.<\/p>\n

Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin said the incident is under investigation, and he confirmed the family suspects their goats were poisoned.<\/p>\n

Corcoran-Watkins said she plans to take the body of one of the dead goats to a veterinarian Friday for blood tests.<\/p>\n

She spent most of Thursday burying the other five of her pet pygmy goats.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll our goats were killed. Every single one of them,\u201d Corcoran-Watkins said. \u201cSome of them were bottle babies. They were born in the winter and their mothers wouldn\u2019t nurse them. They were all pets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t understand why people would do this, but I guess it\u2019s not for me to understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018All our goats were killed. Every single one of them,\u2019 owner says<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[382,28,714,29,4259],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-61575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-animal","tag-headlines","tag-human-interest","tag-newsletter","tag-newsletter-sign-up"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61575"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=61575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}